


where we lay our strength

by tomatocages (kittu9)



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Coming of Age, Community: fma_ladyfest, Gen, Medical Procedures, Medical School, Pre-Canon, Surgery, Women Being Awesome, farm life, gross anatomy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2012-09-15
Packaged: 2017-11-14 06:39:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittu9/pseuds/tomatocages
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”<br/>― Ralph Waldo Emerson</p><p>Sara Rockbell, at the start.</p>
            </blockquote>





	where we lay our strength

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Clewilan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clewilan/gifts).



When Sara Rockbell was in medical school, the first thing she dissected was the leg of a sheep. She wasn't actually a Rockbell and she wasn't quite in medical school when she picked up the scalpel and divided the layers of skin and muscle; the application was pending and, the mail system being what it was--corrupt, unpredictable, dependent on the roads and rails not getting washed out in the spring floods--she might be pending for some time. She was seventeen. A wild dog had gotten in the fold and though she couldn't do a blessed thing for the sheep, and it had lain in the mud too long to consider eating, there was still a practical use left in it. She dragged the tattered limb to the barn and spread out a tarp in the brightest spot, and tied her hair out of her eyes.

Dissecting the sheep's leg, it turned out, wasn't so far removed from butchering one. The muscles separated the same way, and, the leg having been ripped from its owner with no small amount of violence, there was little blood left in it. The veins had collapsed accordingly and the bones were depressingly familiar.

Sara finished the job with some dissatisfaction, and fed the scraps to her own dog, a collie that was more stupid than wild. She set about her evening chores, all the while unpicking the knot of the sheep's musculature in her mind; the real problem, she thought, was that she knew all the motions but none of the names fitted to them. The real problem was, she had expected something different, when the act had been completely familiar and mundane.

The next morning, early, she went back out to the field and dug up the half-chewed lungs. By now, going on three days since the sheep's death, they were more disgusting and lipid than lungs normally were, upon removal from a chest cavity. Sara felt a creeping, desperate frustration at the base of her brain, felt like gritting her teeth and clenching her fists, like tackling a live animal--a person, even--to the ground and cutting them open. She let go of the muddy organs and sat back on her heels, heedless of the grime and shit and clumping grass that smeared over her clothes. She was anxious and afraid, was all; Sara had perhaps too many of her hopes and dreams pinned to her acceptance to medical school, and the wait for her acceptance--the wait for any word at all--fed all of her nightmares of becoming a farm doctor like her grandfather, tending patients who communicated in grunts and bleats and who were going to die anyway, sooner before later.

At supper that night, her grandfather looked at her, a little of his famous bedside manner focused on Sara's tense posture, the way she went about the washing up with particular, focused violence.

"Sara," he said, "I need you to go to Risembool. The sheep will keep."

Grandfather asked so little of her so rarely that she swallowed a thousand questions, as well as her own detestation at being sent on out-of-the-way errands, and set out early the next day, before it was quite dawn, her stupid dog walking beside her and occasionally nipping at her side and bumping into the curve of her hip. There was nothing besides Sara and the cottonwood to herd, on the road to Risembool; the dog was bored. It was a nice day despite the spring floods and she made good time on the parts of the road that hadn't been washed out. It was nearly noon when she crossed the field to Pinako Rockbell's house.

Pinako had known Sara's grandfather for more years than anyone bothered counting: she had introduced Sara's parents, and she had spoken at their funeral a few years back. Sara didn't know her well, just knew she always carried a wrench and was a widow with a son about Sara's own age, maybe a little older. It was hard to tell, with Rockbells; they were long-lived and ambiguous, especially compared to the rest of the farmers in the area.

"Fritz said he was sending you soon," Pinako said from the doorway, like Sara lived down the road and was coming for an egg, instead of the next town over. She was starting to stoop with age, but Pinako still seemed tall, and her hair had gone the sort of grey that meant she had been blonde a few years ago. She had probably once been pretty, Sara realized, and hoped she would lose her own looks in the same sort of weather-beaten way.

"He didn't tell me," Sara said, and realized she was sulking.

"Men," Pinako said, but fondly. The lines around her mouth wrinkled with deep amusement. "Fritz is a good diagnostician. But cheer up, it’s good news: I thought you could work for me, for a while, until the mail starts up again--Urey's gone away and I could use another pair of hands."

"I don't know much about machines," Sara said. "But I can help with the farm." The thought of being useful made her stand a little straighter.

"Eh, the farm. I can get anyone for that. I need good hands, Fritz said once he thought you might be a doctor. What do you want?"

"To matter," Sara said, shocked into honesty.

"Have a baby," Pinako advised dryly, reaching out and pulling Sara into the house. "They swear up and down they don't need you, but oh, even when they're belly-aching, you'll matter. They need the audience."

It sounded like drudgery, but Sara liked hard work. She tucked the notion in her pocket for future consideration.

"Anyway," Pinako kept hold of Sara's wrist as she led her through the house and out the back door, over the yard an to the barn. Sara's dog followed, keeping close even though it meant leaving the scattered chickens alone. "I do a lot of mechanical work here, machines and such--you know, you're a farm girl--but I had an idea a few years back, to improve those wretched prosthetics the doctors in the city give to amputees."

"Automail. They make it in the valley, don't they?"

"Yes. I've some old friends, they send me news when they remember, lazy asses all of them. Come here."

Sara looked around the barn. It was almost clean, and the blood on the floor looked like it had come from a human wound and not from a cow in labor. There was metal wherever she went, and a wall of books stacked hip-high, their spines cracked with the humidity.

"I want to make better Automail and I don't have access to Rush Valley; my son's away, and anyhow he's got no head for this kind of work. It's a job for a woman." Pinako peered at Sara. "You're not squeamish?"

Full of hope and the memory of the decaying sheep lung, Sara shook her head. "I've never minded this kind of mess."

"The books are old but the body hasn't changed," Pinako said. "Read 'em. We can build once you know the basics." She took a book from one stack, seemingly at random, and flipped it open: the colored plate displayed a diagram of the human wrist, and the margins were full of handwriting. Sara took it and traced the long line of a tendon, rendered in smudged, off-ivory color, and thought about learning where to cut and how deep to set the knife; hands were complicated, she knew, and the new threshing machines made for terrible, mutilating injuries to every extremity. In Risembool--in the whole region--a doctor who knew how to tend to a man’s crushed hands was a rare and treasured resource.

She had another thought, having heard the last of Pinako’s statement as though underwater. "Build?" Even as she asked the question, Sara had a thought of automail, of how it seemed so clumsy in the news, and how knowing the bones and muscles of the body might lead to better articulation, more use.

"You've been dissecting whatever you can get your hands on, haven't you? We'll do the opposite. Take all the pieces and put them together. Prosthetics."

The sense of joy that shook her must have shown on her face--and why wouldn't it, Sara thought, she had never been so proud and happy--because Pinako slung a sinewy arm around Sara's rounded shoulder and let out a laugh that scared the dog into barking.

"Oh, my girl," Pinako said. The lines of her face went deeper and happier still. "Let's put our hands deep into this good work."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] where we lay our strength](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1337794) by [Chestnut_filly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chestnut_filly/pseuds/Chestnut_filly)




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